The hospital autopsy rate in the U.S.A. dropped from 41% in 1964 to 22% in 1975. This decline is attributable to a declining interest in them for many reasons by clinicians, surgeons, pathologists, families of the deceased and by hospital administrators and hospital accreditors. Various advances in medicine and surgery in recent years have not replaced the value of autopsy, but indeed, have increased the potential information to be gained from it. For interest in autopsies to be revived among physicians and surgeons, more information of an expert nature must be provided by pathologists from the autopsy.